Ah thanks. This helps explain lots of things such as what everyone is going on about and why that interesting and intelligent Cato guy isn't posting here any more but not why a certain ex-senior civil servant is still on his synagogue committee (or may be that's someone else with the same name). I can't say I blame FT2 or anyone else for gunning for him. It's the oversighting that seems more abusive.

But I personally recall that it didn't seem quite so over-the-top at the time, and even I thought that it had to be tried, in the same way that you have to try telling your neighbor you're going to call the cops on his teenage son who's been trying to kill your dog before you actually call them.

Of course, a lot of people on Wikipedia Review supported this. It happens to be against UK law to send threatening emails, but anyway that's not the point. The point is that with one exception the arbitrators were horrified by the sockpuppeter's actions, yet they did nothing about it, and when they realised they had to, and it was too late, they resorted to other blackmailing tactics. Kirill writes on Nov 30 last year

QUOTE

We should also consider the possibility that we will be asked why we did notstrip him of functionary status; I don't know that we have a good answer,but we really need to have one ready before we publish anything.

Risker then prepared a statement given a sort of explanation of why they had not stripped FT2 of functionary status.

However, when an opportunity to blackmail FT2 into resigning was found, they chose that, and did not publish this statement. That was dishonourable, and is what Wikipedians call 'misleading the community'.

QUOTE

From risker.wp at gmail.com Tue Nov 30 03:15:14 2010On 24 February 2010, FT2 contacted the Arbitration Committee by email torequest return of Checkuser permissions for the purpose of participating ina specific sockpuppetry investigation. At that time, an email written by FT2came to the attention of the entire Arbitration Committee. The email wasaddressed to an abusive sockpuppeter who had been banned from EnglishWikipedia and some other WMF projects as a result of a cross-wikiinvestigation in which FT2 played a significant role. In the email, FT2threatened to contact family members of the sockpuppeter directly, and laidout a series of conditions including those external to Wikipedia with thethreat of contacting employers, government agencies, and others about thenature of the socking. It was known at the time this email was disclosed tothe Committee ''en banc'' that the conditions outlined in FT2's email hadnot been met, and there was concern that he might proceed with the actionshe had threatened in the email.

FT2 confirmed that the text of the email wascorrect and implied that the content had been vetted in advance by a WMFstaff member and a WMF board member. Both denied having read the email atany point. FT2 was also asked to provide further details of that particularinvestigation, which he had refused to share with at least one sittingmember of the arbitration committee at the time of the investigation. Thediscussion was largely abandoned about six weeks later. No formal decisionhad been made because the Committee had not yet received the furtherinformation requested.

In May 2010, FT2 advised the Arbitration Committee that he had now returnedfrom his wikibreak and requested both checkuser and oversight tools. Heacknowledged that he had not responded to the prior requests, and promisedto do so promptly. He did not provide that information to the Committee or,to the best of our knowledge, any Committee member, from that pointforward. Because the Arbitration Committee never received the requestedinformation, and thus our investigation was incomplete, there was never aformal vote on whether or not to reinstate FT2's checkuser and/or oversightpermissions. However, over the course of the two separate discussions, aminimum of seven Arbitration Committee members expressed serious concernsand/or outright opposition to returning checkuser to FT2.[...]

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Tue 29th November 2011, 8:26am

But I personally recall that it didn't seem quite so over-the-top at the time, and even I thought that it had to be tried, in the same way that you have to try telling your neighbor you're going to call the cops on his teenage son who's been trying to kill your dog before you actually call them.

Of course, a lot of people on Wikipedia Review supported this. It happens to be against UK law to send threatening emails, but anyway that's not the point.

Why not make it the point?

A Horse was banned for contacting a school. ArbCom put a clear precedence but yet ignores it when it came to FT2, and, as I pointed out, others who happen to be in their favor.

As you stated, his action was criminal, as with many other people in power. The people running Wikipedia are basically aiding those who are wielding power to harass. Bad, no?

But you are filing a complaint about WMUK, which is connecting themselves to this. This is a power structure that the WMUK claims to be able to work with yet is endorsing criminal activity. They also sat back and did nothing as thousands of images were looted. So harassing people online (now a big offense in the UK), taking lots of UK copyrighted images, allowing people to violate UK law by pretending to be other people for various ways of harassing an enemy (not just Poetlister, but how about Sam Blacketeer and the guy who edited articles on his journalist rivals?), etc.

You have a pattern of endorsed criminality that is almost the culture itself. Then there is the little note I sent you via email which has a lot of ramifications - if the servers are subpoenaed, there will be some interesting findings about a lot of money that may have just "vanished".

And the people who have been Arbitrators for more than a year are all culpable in some way for this culture of illegality, which is verified by the many leaked emails. Hell, look at their stance on copyright infringement - there was proof that 7 of the Arbs were plagiarist, yet it took a year and some before one finally got banned. It is amazing that it took so long for Rlevse to be dealt with when I sent emails to many people, including SandyGeorgia, 6 months after my ban.